how to: give fancy colors to your boot

giving fancy colors to your boot is real easy. you just buy a bucket of paint in a color you like, could be multiple, and splash them onto your boots. you could be wearing them too, but you'd risk getting your socks and pantlegs colored too. it is okay, if you're into that sorta thing.

so, what i really mean is giving colors to the bootup of your machine. you know that boring white-on-black text scrolling by? you can prettify it! here's how.

open up a terminal, and type this:

sudo touch /etc/lsb-base-logging.sh

now, edit that file, using sudo, with your favorite editor (mine is Gedit, so here we go):

of course, you want to customize the colors. the script uses tput setaf-stuff, which you might not understand. i know i didn't. that's why we have Google.first of all, check out this list of possibilities:

i haven't tried editing the colors inside the script yet. so don't kick my ass if something doesn't work or whatever. also, use all of this at your own responsibility. i don't know if you can mess things up, but this is your boot you're dealing with so i'd be a bit careful (however, i wasn't, just plumped that stuff in and rebooted... no worries).

EDIT: just tried customizing the colors. here's what to do. add a BOLD variable to the script.note there are 2 functions inside the script:

log_end_msg () {
[..]
log_action_end_msg () {

both have their own color-variables declared. so add BOLD to both like so:

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

^ nope, i am still using the February 2011 release. however, i do not know about the kernel version. i'm running 3.2.9-rt14 right now. and this is not really my turf, so hopefully somebody will chime in...

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

^ nice! thanks Sabrewolfy!

i'm still considering changing the text too. i think it is a bit wide all-in-all. might replace 'WARNING!' with something else, like simply '!' or '!!' or maybe '!!!' although that sounds more like something is pretty wrong. dunno. it is just that that single word is making the whole list of boot-messages wide, so that's why i want to trim it. maybe just make it 'BOO!'. yeah, that's actually a great idea. doing that now.

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

thanks guys, you're making me feel even more proud than i already am. this is really an accomplishment for me. the results are great, bordering on revolutionary. and it isn't even my own idea! i'm just the (strange) messenger

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

Hello all, I followed the how-to and when I rebooted I got the colors but it told me that HAL and something else that I can't remember failed. No keyboard or mouse had to hit the power button to reboot into recovery and delete "lsb-base-logging.sh" from command line. Any reason or remedy? For a little info, I don't use a DM. thanks!

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

Ok ok now I don't know what I did or did not do the first time,but all is well this time!:rolleyes:"GNU...you feel like a genius on minute and a idiot the next." And I love every minute of it!:lol:Thanks guys.

Re: how to: give fancy colors to your boot

yeah, you can use whatever icons or smileys you like. all you have to look at for aesthetics is that the square brackets are evenly spaced. also, dunno if you can influence the font used at boot, because i find the font my boot has is not the most beautiful for showing any type of smiley...